Goodbye, Gloria

Internet programs draw to close for Niles' Cooper

Internet programs draw to close for Niles' Cooper

November 14, 2008|By LOU MUMFORD Tribune columnist

NILES -- It's strange but true -- Niles has laryngitis. In other words, it's losing its voice. For 24 years, Gloria Cooper, host of the homey "Here's Gloria'' and later "Gloria's Place'' radio programs on Niles-based WNIL-AM 1290, was as much the "Voice of Niles'' as the station itself. Her work there came to an abrupt halt at the end of 2006 after her longtime friend and program producer, Ric Clingaman, lost his job, but Cooper quickly found a new home on the Internet. Instead of a broadcaster, Cooper became a podcaster, recording her interviews with various local personalities at the Niles District Library and making them available for computer-downloading on iPods and MP3 players. She grinned Thursday as she recalled the transition. "When Nancy (Niles Library Director Nancy Studebaker) and I first sat down and talked about this, I didn't know what a podcast was,'' she said. She caught on quickly, as did her audience, apparently. From a few hundred channel visits a month, her Web site -- www.gloriasplace.org -- jumped to as many as 5,000. Cooper said she was averaging about 2,000 visits -- not bad for an audience widely believed to be senior-citizen age -- when she reached her 75th birthday recently and decided to pull the plug. "My dad (the Rev. Theo Eisen) always said to know when it's time to leave, and that it's time to leave when it's no longer fun,'' she said. So, on Nov. 24, she'll record the last of her interviews, which over her career have run the gamut from rock 'n' roller Tommy James, a former Niles resident whose career took off a couple of years after he taped "Hanky Panky'' at WNIL's studios, to 2006 Michigan gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos. "Really, I'm proudest of the fact that no one ever turned me down (for an interview),'' she said. While there were benefits to making her programs available on the Internet, Cooper said there was one major drawback: Listeners lost the opportunity to call in and ask questions of her guests. "On radio, people could call in, and, boy, they did,'' she said. Yes, interest in Cooper's programs was high during long stretches of her two stints at WNIL. In 1973, Niles had its first Four Flags Area Apple Festival and Doc Severinsen, then the band leader on NBC-TV's "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,'' was booked as the featured entertainer. Cooper recalled that Severinsen was riding in the festival parade and was surprised when a bystander heckled him for allegedly referring to Niles in a conversation with Carson as "a little berg.'' "I was at home when the phone rang, right after the parade, and it was Doc Severinsen's manager. He told me about what happened and said Doc wanted to be on my show -- someone had given him my name -- to talk about it,'' she recalled. "I tore out to the studio ... and ended up interviewing him up at the high school. It turned out it never happened, that he'd never said anything bad about Niles. "Before he left, I asked him to tape an introduction for my show. He cut a 'Heeeeeere's Gloria,' the way he did 'Heeeeeere's Johnny.' '' As for her podcast guests, she said Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey was one of her favorites, telling her prior to the recent passage of a police millage in Niles Township that his main concern was having to lay off seven deputies should the request fail. Others she recalls with fondness are John Miller, chairman of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, U. S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, and the late county Commissioner Larry Clymer. "He introduced my audience and me to every county person,'' Cooper said, speaking of Berrien officials. "We don't get a lot of county news down here, and Larry provided it.'' Humility has always been a trademark of Cooper, who refers to herself as "just a mouth.'' Maybe so but it's a mouth that has soared, and one that will be missed.